


Unrequited

by tastewithouttalent



Series: Confessions [1]
Category: Soul Eater, Soul Eater Not!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fist Fights, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:39:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s not that the feel of Ox’s cheekbone under Harvar's fist is horrifying, or even particularly shocking, even though he never expected to be attacking his meister." Harvar loses his patience and Ox discovers a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrequited

Harvar is familiar with the experience of injuring others. It’s inherent to his situation as a weapon, after all; dealing damage to the target is the ultimate goal for him. Everything else -- strategy, skill, Resonance -- comes second to that initial plan. So it’s not that the feel of Ox’s cheekbone under his fist is horrifying, or even particularly shocking, even though he never expected to be attacking his meister, and even though this has a visceral reality to it that his weapon-form attacks lack. In fact, it’s not horror he feels at all. It’s a deep satisfaction, the slow grind of months of rising irritation finally boiling over without the buffer of his weapon form or the passive-aggression burn of sarcasm to dull the edge. There’s just the bruising pain of impact spreading out into his knuckles, the reflexive grunt of protest from the boy under him, and the  _pleasure_ , the relief of too-long withheld tension finally,  _finally_  free.

Ox didn’t realize what he was doing. Harvar could barely have told him, though he knew enough about his own state of mind to groan not-so-quietly and roll his eyes when the meister launched into yet  _another_  speech about his undying love for Kim Diehl, as if the girl ever looked at him twice. But he tries to be patient, like he always tries to be patient, swallows back the rising tide of frustration and hurt while Ox extolls the perfection of the girl’s eyes, shoulders, waist,  _ankles_ , as if there’s no one in the whole world but her for him. Harvar doesn’t speak, Harvar doesn’t  _have_  to speak. Ox could be talking to a wall, for all the difference it makes in the non-conversation they’re having. That, of course, just grinds Harvar’s patience thinner, and he’s just coming up on his limit when Ox finishes a sentence with, “Don’t you think so?”

Harvar didn’t hear what went before but he doesn’t have to. He knows the gist of the conversation from sheer repetition, the other boy’s praises are burnt into his brain until he can’t shake them even in his wildest fantasies. And he’s  _done_ , done with this conversation and done with his patience, so when he says, “I  _don’t_ ,” it’s snapping with the heat of the anger he makes no attempt to restrain.

Ox huffs, as if Harvar has dealt him a mortal wound instead of disagreeing with his taste in women, and when he speaks Harvar can hear the haughty condescension coming his way in the sniff of air he takes before he starts. “What facet of my analysis do you find fault with?”

Harvar stares down at the table, thoughts whirling with irritation rapidly coalescing into rage under his skin, the volatile type that demands expression, and he knows he should get up and leave but he doesn’t want to, the destructive edge of his nature wants him to stay. So he stays, and when he answers he’s looking for the fight and it shows in his voice. “The idea that Kim Diehl is perfection itself.” He extends a finger, taps it to indicate the first point. “The inevitability of her reciprocating your affection.” Two fingers. “The impossibility of your surviving without her.” Three. “The level of her objective attractiveness to all who see her.” Four, and the thumb for last. “The assumption that I care to hear  _any_  of this.”

Ox makes a sound like he’s been hit with each of Harvar’s fingers coming down; even without seeing the hurt on his face, it’s satisfying to hear the pain in the sound, to know that Harvar is finally paying back some of the suffering the meister has been unknowingly dealing to him. He forms his extended fingers into a fist, digs his fingernails hard into his palm, and tips his head up to look at Ox.

The other boy looks floored for a moment, until he sees Harvar turning to look at him. Then his chin goes up, his mask comes down, and when he crosses his arms Harvar’s blood goes cold with anticipation of something  _truly_  vicious.

“You would understand if you had any humanity in you at all.” That hurts, but it’s nothing new. Harvar’s heard it from other people, from Ox himself during occasional previous fights. “Trust me to get stuck with a weapon who wastes all his spark on combat and doesn’t have any left over for really living.” The meister looks away so the light catches his glasses and Harvar can’t see his eyes at all. “You don’t know what it  _is_  to suffer the agony of unrequited love.”

Ox didn’t mean that last as the killing blow. Harvar knows that, or will know it once the wash of red fury has faded from his vision. But his intentions don’t matter. The weapon is lurching up from his chair, his teeth are coming together with an audible click, and his newly-formed fist comes around to smash solidly into the bridge of Ox’s nose.

Ox goes stumbling backwards, his hand coming up over his face in reflexive protection even before he halts his instinctive retreat from the attack. Harvar doesn’t move to follow but he doesn’t sit back down either, doesn’t relax his hands from the fists he’s made at his sides. When Ox lowers his hand his nose is bleeding a curtain of red down to his mouth.

“What the  _hell_ , Harvar?” he asks, the irregularity of the language more telling to his surprise than his tone.

“Don’t tell me how I  _feel_ ,” Harvar hisses, tightening his fists so his palms ache from the pressure of his fingernails. “Don’t you  _dare_.”

“Maybe if you  _told_  me once in a while I wouldn’t have to explain it to you,” Ox shoots back. He drags the back of his hand over his face, which only serves to smear the red over his cheek, but then he makes a fist too. Harvar’s never tried to pick a fight with Ox before, has always assumed it would be harder than this, but either he was wrong or he’s hit a nerve in turn and he doesn’t care. His arms are shaking with tension and his skin is itching to hit or be hit, anything so long as it’s vicious and painful.

“Like you would listen,” Harvar scoffs with as much edge as he can muster. “You never listen to anything but the sound of your own voice.”

“Well  _you_  don’t talk.” Ox takes a step in, close enough that the perpetual glare off his thick glasses slides off and Harvar can see the furious shadow in his eyes. “I would listen if you didn’t keep me at arm’s length all the time.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“You’re not using words yet.” Ox reaches up to pull his glasses free; his face looks strangely naked without them, his eyes wide and vulnerable without their shield of glass. “But fine. You want to talk with your fists, I’m listening now.”

“Fine,” Harvar growls. He appreciates Ox taking his glasses off -- it means that when he steps in and brings his fist up, he can aim for the meister’s eye without worrying about shattering glass. Ox turns his head anyway, takes the hit on his cheek instead of the bridge of his eyebrow, and Harvar is just starting to raise his eyebrows in appreciation of the half-dodge when the meister’s fist comes up from under and slams into his jaw.

It’s a mess, after that. Ox lets Harvar land hits of his own, but the meister’s are harder if fewer. Harvar keeps getting in glancing blows -- one on Ox’s lip, a fist into his shoulder, a misjudged swing at his cheek that leaves a scratch in its wake. But Ox’s responsive punches are devastating, land with more force than Harvar thought the skinny meister had in him. The one on his jaw leaves him reeling; when Ox’s fingers hit his mouth Harvar’s lip tears, leaves him spitting as much blood as the other boy. There’s one that Harvar only barely dodges, that comes so close to his own visor that he stumbles backward to buy a few seconds to tear it off. Then he’s in closer, grabbing at Ox’s pristine shirtfront with his left hand to hold him still for a flurry of hits with his right, and Ox’s fist is slamming into his shoulder and low under his ribs, and Harvar is choking and gasping for breath when the meister kicks at his shin and his balance goes.

There’s no chance to catch himself and he doesn’t bother trying. Ox is under him, anyway, it’s easy to let himself go limp so the meister takes most of the force of his fall rather than himself. But it’s not  _comfortable_ , Ox really is skinny and the impact drives bruises into Harvar’s leg and shoulder and stomach; if the meister weren’t as winded by the fall as Harvar, the fight would be over then.

It is almost over anyway. When Harvar tries to catch his breath his body doesn’t obey, and when he swings again it lacks the vicious force of his first few punches. Ox has his own shirt, is shoving Harvar back by his hold so he can’t get a good angle anyway, and the fist the weapon has on the meister’s shirt loosens, slides up until Harvar is more leaning to support his weight on the other boy than holding him still.

“What the hell is your problem?” Ox demands, breathless and gasping and choking from his still-bleeding nose. His face is going purple and red, swelling in the shape of Harvar’s fists from a multitude of glancing blows, and Harvar’s own vision is going blurry from the proper black eye the other boy gave him. The fight is over, though, Ox isn’t resisting and Harvar lacks the strength to keep going, and he’s got the other boy pinned under him and Ox looks terrible, all bruises and blood and panting breathing.

Harvar stares down at Ox’s face for a minute -- the damage he’s done, the angry confusion in the other’s dark eyes -- and then he closes his hand into a fist on the other’s bloodstained shirt, and drags him up sideways by this hold, and crushes his mouth against the other boy’s.

It really is a crush more than a kiss. Harvar’s mouth is open so he can gasp for breath and his teeth slam against Ox’s, and it hurts his torn lip and Ox tastes like the blood coating his face. It’s painful, and it’s disappointing, and it’s not what Harvar imagined, when he let himself imagine kissing Ox. But even so, even when Ox shoves him away so hard the weapon topples backward, skids until he fetches up against the wall, his blood is burning and his head is hazy, and he’s almost smiling when a shadow falls over him and he looks up into the meister’s furious expression.

“What the  _hell_  was that for?” Ox demands, as if Harvar’s behavior wasn’t perfectly clear. His hands are in fists again but Harvar’s will to fight is gone, evaporated with that brief touch of his mouth to Ox’s, and he blinks, and sighs, and stays slouched against the wall.

“Don’t tell me I don’t have feelings,” he says, low and rough. Someone else would talk over him, wouldn’t be listening in the first place, but Ox is listening to him, listening  _intently_  for once, and the meister’s hands curl in at the wrists like he’s thinking about punching or maybe thinking about bringing his hands up over his face.

“For  _me_?” Ox demands, sharp and disbelieving. It makes Harvar laugh, even if the sound comes out more like a cry of pain than amusement, and he shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the shock over Ox’s face.

“For you.” He would get up if he could, go and lock himself in his own room while the bruises rise under his skin, but he’s shaking even slumped here as he is and he doesn’t trust his legs to take his weight.

The shadow on his face shifts, and that’s surprising enough that Harvar opens his eyes again. Ox has dropped to his knees, his hands have fallen limp and open at his sides; his mouth is open, his eyes watery with almost-tears. He brings a hand up to drag over his mouth and takes most of the blood with it, though it can’t do anything for the swelling from the hits that went before.

“Why?” he finally asks, sounding lost and broken and  _confused_ , like Harvar has just told him the sun rises in the north.

The weapon could say something sarcastic about bad taste, or something gentle about the meister not giving himself enough credit. He does neither. Instead he stares at Ox, stares at the bruises he raised himself while his own skin aches dully with the pain from Ox’s fists, and says, “Because you’re you,” since it’s the only thing he can say, and it’s true.

Ox doesn’t protest, and he doesn’t hit Harvar again, although the weapon wouldn’t have been surprised by such. He does stare, silent and blood-smeared and looking like Harvar has just shattered his whole world around him. Harvar determines that there are two options -- either Ox stays there until the weapon musters the strength and determination to get up and move away, or he does what turns out to be the actual result, which is lean in to initiate a kiss of his own.

Harvar doesn’t move away. He knows what this is even before Ox’s lips brush against his with enough hesitation to speak to the experimentation under the motion. He probably should, since this isn’t what he wants either, but there is a pathetically desperate part of him that wants this, still, even this broken version of his actual desire, and if he shuts his eyes he can almost imagine he’s not bruised and aching and that Ox isn’t on the verge of pulling away even before he’s made contact.

It’s only a moment. Then the meister is rocking back on his heels and Harvar is opening his eyes to stare at him as blankly as he can manage under the circumstances, with his split lip stinging from even the light pressure of the other boy’s mouth.

“Happy now?” he asks. “Convinced you’re straight yet? I could have told you that much before we started.”

“Hey,” Ox says in weak protest. “You hit me first, don’t try to say this was my fault.”

“It was absolutely your fault,” Harvar sighs. “Look, we’ll just ignore this, pretend it never happened and I’ll never say anything about it again.” He drags one leg in towards himself so he can get a foot under himself, starts to push to his feet while his declaration is still hanging in the air.

“Wait,” Ox demands. Harvar isn’t sure if there’s an edge of meister-command under that that stalls his muscles, or if it’s just that his body doesn’t want to complete the motion, but he does, hesitates with his feet half under him. Ox reaches for his shoulder, grabs a fistful of rumpled shirt, and pulls him in so Harvar almost falls against his mouth before the meister’s other hand catches his other shoulder to steady him.

It’s better, this time. It still hurts, Harvar’s lip is starting to throb dully, but Ox is doing something with his mouth that seems more intentional than accidental, their teeth aren’t smashing together, and Harvar’s back is angled oddly but his heart is starting to pound, racing more now than it did even with the fight adrenaline.

Then Ox pulls back, makes a face, says, “Ow,” and Harvar drops back to the wall, flinching away since he can’t trust himself to attempt standing again.

“Okay,” he says again, his voice shaking audibly now. “You must be done now, right?”

Ox  _tsks_ , clicks his tongue and reaches out to grab at Harvar’s shoulder again even though the weapon’s not going anywhere. “It hurts because you hit me, not because I hate it. It’s not a good test, my whole face is aching.”

“Are you going to pencil me in to your calendar then?” Harvar tries to snap, but then fingers come up under the loose edge of his shirt to press against his skin and his words fade off into a whine in the back of his throat.

“No,” Ox says, still sounding shockingly steady given how badly his hand on Harvar’s waist is shaking. “Unless you want me to wait.”

That is a dirty trick. Even in his most realistic fantasies Harvar didn’t imagine this, this shaking touch of fingers on his skin and Ox’s eyes wide and frightened and  _curious_ , and now the meister is leaving it up to  _him_  to stop. He probably should, he recognizes rationally, but rationally he knows absolutely that if they stop now he won’t ever get this chance again, and irrationally his body is entirely clear on what it wants from the other boy.

“Fuck,” Harvar says, the word weighted with all the complexities of his racing thoughts and coated with the final decision he knew he was going to make before he even started running calculations. “No, I don’t want you to wait.”

Ox lets a breath go. Harvar can hear it shake, can hear the edge of a whimper under the exhale, and then Ox is leaning in closer, not for another kiss but just to rest his forehead against Harvar’s. The contact isn’t entirely unprecedented -- Harvar isn’t physically demonstrative but Ox definitely is, regularly grabs at the weapon’s wrist to get his attention or leans in against him when they’re next to each other on the couch. It’s never felt like it means anything before, or at least never felt like it  _should_  mean anything regardless of what Harvar’s reaction was. But this  _does_ , this feels awkward and intense and loaded with an offer and fright and more meaning than Harvar is sure Ox intends.

He kind of wants to push the meister away. There’s a part of him that feels like he’s using Ox, another part of him that feels like Ox might be using  _him_ , that this is weird and too fast and aren’t they rushing into this, after all? But his meister’s hand is sliding sideways over his stomach and Ox’s fingers are closing on the button of his jeans and he  _cannot_  make the other boy stop, even if this ruins everything he’s pretty sure everything is already ruined anyway. Ox is  _touching_  him, even through the denim the contact is enough to make him flinch in reaction and rush his breathing, and there is no possible way that Ox has missed the resistance under his fingers.

“Fuck,” Ox blurts, too shocked to catch back the impulsive response. “All this time, Harvar?” until the weapon reaches out to cover his mouth with a desperate hand, gasp “Quiet,  _shut up_  Ox,” and the meister subsides, stops talking in favor of pulling Harvar’s jeans open. It’s awful, it’s deliberate and awkward but it’s also everything Harvar wanted, he can hear the panicked desperation in Ox’s breath, the way the meister’s inhale catches and stalls when Harvar’s hips come up in instinctive rhythm to meet the meister’s touch.

“I’m sorry,” Harvar blurts, shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Ox’s reaction. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Ox, I just -- I’m  _sorry_.”

“I didn’t know,” Ox’s voice comes muffled from Harvar’s hand, his lips dragging against the weapon’s palm. “I didn’t  _know_ ,” as if it’s a mantra, an explanation and apology and comfort all at once, but his fingers are dragging at Harvar’s clothes and pressing skin-on-skin and the weapon can’t think straight to stop him, to even decide if he  _wants_  Ox to stop. The meister’s hand is still shaking, the way it did the first time he touched Harvar’s weapon form and accidentally shocked himself, but the effect is going the other way, this time, Harvar’s body is arching up against the touch with reflexive need, vibrating with intensity and  _want_.

Harvar drops his hand from Ox’s mouth, lifts it instead to cover his own face and hide the flushing heat of instant response to the contact of the meister’s hand on him. Ox’s fingers land on Harvar’s cheek, his palm pressing in against the weapon’s cheekbone like his unsteady hands can offer any support at all; Harvar shivers and Ox’s fingers wrap around him, hesitate, then start to move, stroking over him like he’s imagined for more than a year now. It’s not like he imagined, not as smooth or as practiced and he’s hot with embarrassment as much as pleasure. It’s better, better than the cool perfection of his imagination, to have Ox’s hand shaking with nerves and the throb of Harvar’s own bruises under his skin in counterpoint to the pull of the meister’s fingers, because in his imagination it was always himself, in the end, and this self-conscious almost-panic that is racing through his blood and sending his heart pounding out of rhythm is all due to Ox himself, idiotic and brilliant and perfect just as he is.

“Oh my god,” Ox says, soft and stunned, and Harvar groans at the reverent tone of his meister’s voice and is suddenly impossibly, anxiously close.

“Don’t stop,” he blurts, and drops his hand from his face so he can grab a handful of Ox’s shirt to hold him still. When he opens his eyes Ox is staring at him, eyes wide and mouth open, and Harvar doesn’t think about his own face at all, just drinks in all the elements of Ox’s -- the swelling collecting in his lower lip, the dark-dilation of his eyes, the faint freckles over the bridge of his nose and cheekbones.

Ox swallows hard, his gaze flicking between Harvar’s eyes like he’s looking for a clear-written answer. “Is this okay?” he says, or starts to say, and the motion of his mouth on the words is too much, unbearable intensity together with the friction of his hand.

“ _Oh_ ,” Harvar says, “ _God_ ,” and he’s coming, too fast to brace himself for the shuddering pleasure through his body. He curls in around Ox’s hold, brings his head forward so fast his forehead cracks against the meister’s and Ox jerks away with a reflexive hiss. It hurts, there’s a throb of dull ache from the impact, but Harvar is too lost to feel it properly, it’s just part of the waves of sensation pouring through him.

It feels like he comes forever, like the world ceases to exist for a moment while his thoughts fly apart in an eternity of satisfaction. Then he gasps for air, blinks sight back into existence, and realizes that he’s rocked forward, pressed his forehead into Ox’s shoulder and that his hand is still clinging to the meister’s shirt. It takes conscious effort to release him, even more to pull away from the safety of the other’s shoulder; Harvar has to steel himself, fix his eyes on the floor before he can make himself lean back. It’s not until his shoulders hit the wall that Ox lets him go and pulls his hand away.

“Jesus,” the meister blurts. Harvar can’t make himself look at the other boy’s face but he’s flushing anyway, embarrassment replacing satisfaction under his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the floor. It’s almost a whisper but it’s the best he can do; he’s going cold with shame and embarrassment and misery, he just wants to  _go_  now. “I’m sorry, I didn’t --” But he  _did_ , at least some part of him, and the words die in his throat. Ox lifts his hand from Harvar’s cheek and the weapon moves, twists to pull away before the meister grabs his shoulder.

“What are you  _doing_?” he demands.

“Leaving,” Harvar snaps. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Don’t.” Ox sounds weird, strained and breathless. “Harvar,  _look_  at me.”

Harvar tries to fight it, for a moment, but habit and training run too deep, he  _can’t_  refuse that voice. His head turns in towards the other, he starts to look up just as Ox comes in, so the other boy’s mouth misses his and catches his jaw instead.

By right that ought to stop the meister, or at least slow him down, but Ox presses a kiss into Harvar’s bruised skin and then comes across to catch his mouth instead. That’s his tongue sliding over Harvar’s mouth, warm and demanding, and Harvar is too shocked to do anything but instinctively respond to that and open his mouth. Ox’s fingers tighten against the back of his neck, Ox’s tongue comes past his lips, and when the meister’s sticky fingers close on Harvar’s wrist and drag his hand forward to press against clothing it takes a minute for Harvar to piece together what he’s feeling. Then it hits him, around the point that he’s shifting his fingers to get a better sense and Ox rocks forward against the contact and hisses in reaction against his mouth.

Harvar makes an incoherent noise of surprise into Ox’s mouth and the meister pulls back, lets his hold on Harvar’s wrist go so he can reach for his belt and Harvar can blurt, “I thought you liked girls.”

“I do,” Ox says, the words gone high and shaky as Harvar moves his hand.

“I thought you  _only_  liked girls,” Harvar clarifies. Ox has his belt open; the weapon pulls at the button of his slacks, the meister’s hand comes down on his shoulder so the other boy can brace himself.

“I hadn’t considered the alternatives much,” Ox manages. Harvar lets his shirt go in favor of getting the meister’s pants open and down a few inches, closes his fingers around the meister’s cock so Ox groans and rocks himself in closer for more contact. “The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

“You’re so --” Harvar starts. He means to say ‘dumb’ or ‘ridiculous’ or something similarly insulting, but what comes out of his mouth is “Amazing.”Ox blinks, stares at him for a moment, so Harvar is gazing up at the meister’s face when he moves his hand and sees the other boy’s expression collapse into startled pleasure.

It’s trickier than Harvar expected. The angle is different than anything he’s done before, the other boy’s movements keep throwing him off, and when he starts out slow like he always does with himself Ox groans “ _More_ , Harvar,” until the weapon speeds so much he’s sure he’s going to hurt the other boy. But that seems to be what Ox wants, a pace so face Harvar can feel his arm starting to cramp just from how quickly he’s moving, and he’d complain if it weren’t for the way Ox’s face goes soft, relaxes into anticipation until he looks calmer than Harvar has ever seen him. He hovers there for a minute, head tipped back and mouth slightly open; then he sighs, the sound warm and rich with satisfaction, and shivers as he comes over Harvar’s fingers.

Harvar is still staring at his meister’s face when Ox opens his eyes, refocuses himself on the present and looks down at the weapon’s expression. He grins, languid delight in the expression, and Harvar closes his open mouth and starts to flush again.

Ox slides sideways, pulls away from Harvar’s touch just long enough to come around to lean against the wall and press his shoulder in against the other boy’s. Harvar lets himself relax against the wall, looks down at the utter mess they’ve made of his clothes and contemplates mustering the energy to care. It’s not worth it, he decides, not when his limbs are heavy with exhaustion and satisfaction and the slow build of pain from their fight.

“You could have just said something,” Ox points out from beside him.

“No,” Harvar says. “I couldn’t have.”

Ox laughs, leans sideways to bump his shoulder heavily against Harvar’s, and when he reaches out for the weapon’s hand Harvar is the one who laces their fingers together over their scraped knuckles.


End file.
